"If somebody knocked tonight, sweetheart, you could leave them there all night. Nobody who loved you would expect a little boy to open this door." Felicity shifted Frost higher on her hip so he could see over her shoulder. Victor was checking the rooms beyond the entrance, and Voss had found a little square of glass beside the frame. "See where Voss can look out without undoing the latch? A grown-up can look there and ask who sent them. If we still don't know, that door stays shut."
Frost considered this. "What if it's you and I can hear your voice?"
"Then I'll sit down on the step and wait for one of these big handsome fellows to earn his supper." Through the glass, Voss held up the hand he'd skinned clearing broken wood from the frame. He appeared to feel he'd already earned it. Frost giggled against her ear, and for the first time since the warehouse his arms loosened enough for her to take a full breath.
Victor came back for them once he'd checked the stairs. The old building had a room off the hall where the wind couldn't reach the floor. Voss and Damien took the first watch together, one on either side of the door. Felicity spread the soft blanket from Victor's space below a window with a good thick sill, set her bag where Luna could reach it, and put both children to bed. By the time she'd finished telling them how Tommy had tried to wash a rat off the floor and nearly washed the floor off the building, Luna had drooled a warm patch onto her shirt.
From her place on the blanket she could see how they'd chosen the room. The fire sat behind a piece of fallen wall. Its light reached the near side of the doorway and stopped there, well short of the windows. Rose had her back to a solid pillar and a vine along the floor, where she could feel anything moving in the hall. Even Tommy had found a quiet job for his hands. He sat checking a rifle magazine, dropping each round into his cap so it wouldn't click against the concrete.
Luna rolled onto her back. One hand went slack, and out of it came the scrap of cloth the metal charm had been wrapped in. Felicity went to get it off the floor and found she couldn't reach. Luna had wound her other hand into the neck of her shirt. She could undo the child's grip or sit with one tit nearly hanging out in front of Snow Team. After a day spent escaping a warehouse in somebody else's pants, the choice was pretty straightforward. Victor handed her the cloth without so much as a glance down her shirt. She loved the man, but under ordinary circumstances she'd have wanted to know what was wrong with him.
Frost made a little shield in his sleep. The hair on Felicity's arm lifted where it touched the edge. She left him the sleeve he'd been hanging on to and worked her elbow out of Victor's jacket. A small price to pay for getting to stand up and pee by herself again, she thought. Then she reached the doorway and found she couldn't stand to lose sight of the bedding.
"Want me to come with you?" Victor asked. He'd brought a tin of water for her to wash with. There was a cut on his cheek from the rescue. She'd been waiting for a good chance to fix it, and now she could barely lift her hand to touch his face.
"I think I'm about to make a horrible noise, and I don't want the children to think somebody got through the door."
Rose sat down beside the blanket, keeping her sore ribs clear of Luna's feet. Ash took the spot on Frost's other side. Victor led Felicity just around the corner, close enough that she could hear the snuffly sound Luna made through her nose when she slept. He set down the tin. When he opened his arms, Felicity caught a fistful of his shirt and cried so hard her first breath back hurt her throat.
She'd been careful about the sound she made for days. She'd heard boots coming down stairs to fetch women and kept her mouth shut because somebody in a smaller cell would get punished for her trouble. Even this afternoon she'd given the women clear directions and tried to put a face on her fear that the cubs could look at without being scared themselves. Here was her husband with the rescue finished, still smelling of smoke, asking nothing more of her than that she let him hold her while she cried.
"I was afraid you'd find the room empty," she got out against his shirt. "I kept thinking you'd have to go back up those stairs and tell the children I'd been there. That man had the key in his hand, and I was already trying to work out how long it would take you to get from the cart to the bedroom."
Victor put one wing between her and the hall. His hand was shaking where it rested against the back of her neck. When she'd put her cheek in it by the stream he'd seemed to her the steadiest man she'd ever met. She liked that he loved her enough to let her feel this, too.
He held on until she could hear him. "I liked the idea of leaving you in a decent room for once. I keep thinking how pleased I was when you said you'd stay home."
"I wanted a day off, Victor. I'd still like one. I just want the next one to come with a lock I can work myself." His laugh came out wet. She got her hand up to his cheek at last. "I thought about you taking all that time over Luna's buckle. It helped, knowing how you'd look after them even if you never found me."
He turned his face and kissed the center of her palm. She'd seen what he could do to solid stone with that mouth set hard, and here he was letting her wipe his nose with the bottom of his own shirt.
When Sarge relieved Voss at the door, the wolf found them sitting on the floor with the tin between them. He handed her a clean cloth. "I had the whole road figured out," he said. "I'd even worked out what to tell the cubs if the truck tracks ended. I had no idea what to say to you if we actually got you back."
"You could tell me what happened to your hand. I'm fond of all the fingers on it." She rinsed the scrape and wound a strip of cloth around his knuckles. He let her finish before he used that hand to draw her close.
"Tomorrow," he said against her hair, "I'd like to hear you complain about an ordinary bloody breakfast." He kissed her until she forgot the tin by her foot and put her heel straight into it. Most of the water went down his boot. The rest made it under Victor, who'd been enjoying himself considerably right up to that point.
They went back for the cubs with one damp boot each. Luna had managed to roll right up against Rose, with her little fist fastened in a fold of Rose's sleeve. Ash had one foot in the air. He'd put it up on the crate for a moment, he explained, and Frost had rolled between him and the crate, leaving Ash with an interesting choice between dropping a heavy boot on the boy or losing all feeling below the knee.
"Your daughter's sticky," Rose told her. The front of her shirt did have a wet patch on it. "How can somebody that small transfer this much of herself from one person to another without visibly shrinking?"
"Keep your voice down or Tommy will try to find out." Felicity got a pillow under Frost, and Ash rescued his foot. She covered Rose's hand where it rested on Luna's back. "I wanted you here for the part where I got to put them to bed. I'm glad I still get to do that with you."
Rose squeezed her fingers. The vine along the floor brushed Felicity's ankle once and went back to minding the doorway.
Back in the hall Damien was still on watch. She offered him the dry end of the cloth for a streak of plaster along his jaw. "You could come sit with us once somebody relieves you. Nobody's measuring how far your tail gets across the blanket."
"I've been told I take up quite a bit of couch," he reminded her. He held still while she got the plaster off. He looked tired enough to sleep where he stood, but he waited for Sarge to check the road before he turned his back on the glass. She'd spent days watching that man to see what he did with a closed door. Out of all the things she wanted to tell him, the one she managed was that she was glad he'd stayed.
When she'd gone back to the children, she heard Sarge make space for Damien against the pillar outside. He asked why the snake had stayed. Felicity cleaned a drool spot from Frost's mouth with the corner of the blanket and waited to hear the answer. It was one thing to tell a woman he wanted to stay when she'd been the only one in the room with him. Sarge had been expecting to have to throw him out, and both of them knew it.
"She asked me," Damien said. "I'd have been a special kind of bastard to put her through the trouble of arguing with her husbands on my behalf and then leave her to do the washing up."
"Do you get husband rights if you're on washing-up duty?" Tommy wanted to know. "Because I have some grievances going back to the brewery."
"You once tried to clean a plate with my cuff while I was still wearing it," Sarge reminded him. "Come find me when you're ready to marry the sink."
The small laugh from the other side of the door was Damien's. Felicity closed her eyes on the sound. She could hear the men outside without staying awake to make sure they stayed where she'd left them.
Morning found her between her husbands with a cub tucked under each arm. She was halfway through complaining to Voss about the lumps in her porridge when somebody knocked. Frost sat up, swallowed his mouthful and looked at her. This time he kept right on eating while Victor went to see.
Through the glass she could see Finch, come up from the gatehouse with flour on his coat from feeding the women who'd sheltered there. She could also see three men behind him. The tallest had a long burn down one sleeve, and the horseshoe in his hand gave off a blue spark when he touched it to the frame.
Victor spoke through the glass, then opened the door as far as the chain allowed. "I told you I'd hear you out once my wife was safe," he said. "She's right here, so tell us what you found on the east road."